That was precisely why Ruan Mei had devoted so much time and effort to recreating Skaracabaz from the Swarm King's remains.
It represented a bottom-up understanding of life—a genuine advancement in technology.
If she couldn't understand something because the gap between them was simply too vast, then she would raise herself higher until that gap became smaller.
Recreating an Emanator of Propagation was merely the first step.
Admittedly, even that first step had already proven so difficult that Ruan Mei once believed it might consume her entire lifetime.
But her ambitions extended far beyond that.
She hoped that one day, working entirely from the bottom up, she could recreate Tayzzyronth, the Aeon of Propagation.
Even if she could only reproduce a fragment of THEM.
Originally, Ruan Mei's progress shouldn't have been anywhere near this fast. Her first major breakthrough was supposed to come only after she obtained the computational data generated by the Simulated Universe.
That was, in fact, one of the minor reasons she had agreed to participate in the Simulated Universe project in the first place.
Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—Lin Yi had stolen far too many memories during his previous solo operation to study them all himself.
So he had shared some with the others.
Among them happened to be memories related to Skaracabaz.
Those memories had helped Ruan Mei enormously, accelerating her research by a tremendous amount.
And now—
Ruan Mei wanted to achieve another bottom-up understanding of Life.
If she succeeded—
It would mean she had completely grasped the ultimate mysteries of Life.
That was the final goal she desired above all else.
Ruan Mei wanted to know whether, one day, she could—
Dissect Remembrance.
Regulate Equilibrium.
Deconstruct Beauty.
Reproduce Permanence.
Cultivate, reconstruct, and recreate Life.
Until finally...
Becoming ■■.
Ruan Mei understood perfectly well that the incomplete Skaracabaz she had created before could be manipulated however she pleased.
Even if those synthetic Swarm Kings were theoretically capable of breaking through the genetic shackles she had embedded within them, doing so required time.
And the synthetic Skaracabaz simply didn't live long enough to accomplish that.
But this genuine Emanator of Propagation was different.
Through the contact of her fingertips, Ruan Mei could feel its genes constantly changing and reorganizing themselves.
In only a few moments, its genetic composition had already become completely different from before.
Ruan Mei frowned as she examined the chaotic mess.
The genetic structure looked like an enormous pile of garbled code.
Like every single line contained a bug.
Then—
Ruan Mei understood.
No wonder she had never been able to truly recreate and birth a genuine Emanator of Propagation.
The genetics of Propagation simply didn't obey reason.
They didn't obey logic either.
They brute-forced everything through sheer Path energy.
And unfortunately, this enormous pile of spaghetti code was rapidly finding ways around the safeguards Ruan Mei had embedded within it.
She needed to hurry.
Once Skaracabaz regained its freedom, it certainly wouldn't obediently remain here and cooperate with her experiments.
Ruan Mei produced a scalpel.
Upon closer inspection, it looked identical to the scalpels used by Polka Kakamond.
Where she had obtained it was unclear.
In any case, Lin Yi somehow had one now too.
Ruan Mei flicked her wrist.
The scalpel passed cleanly through one of Skaracabaz's mandibles, severing it.
"SCREEE—ROAR—!"
Ruan Mei weighed the severed mandible in her hand.
"This mandible is saturated with pheromones capable of breaking down memetic structures."
"You've already evolved a specialized countermeasure against the memetic forms of Memokeepers?"
"What extraordinary evolutionary and adaptive capabilities."
Had those Memokeepers left even slightly later, they might genuinely have ended up inside the insect's stomach.
Within moments, the severed mandible had already regenerated.
Meanwhile, the one in Ruan Mei's hand began writhing restlessly.
It looked as though it might transform into an entirely new and extremely powerful insect at any moment.
Ruan Mei didn't appear to do anything particularly complicated.
Her slender fingers merely tapped it a few times.
The mandible immediately settled down.
She casually stored it away.
The movement looked effortless and elegant.
Only Ruan Mei herself understood how difficult those few taps truly were.
She repeated the experiment.
Once again, she cut through the same newly regenerated mandible.
This time, however, the scalpel encountered slight resistance.
She repeated the action.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Until eventually, even when the scalpel itself chipped and cracked, it could no longer leave the slightest mark on the mandible.
Within an extremely short period of time—
Ruan Mei had cut the same mandible fifty times.
She carefully examined the results.
"You adapted to cutting of this intensity so quickly."
"Each regeneration increased its structural strength."
"You even disconnected the pain receptors from this region~"
"What astonishing evolutionary speed."
Ruan Mei then produced an enormous hammer.
It belonged to one of Herta's puppets.
Then, in a manner completely at odds with her elegant appearance—
She gave the mandible a gentle bonk.
Crack!
The mandible fractured with ease.
Ruan Mei had misjudged its durability and used too much force.
"Sorry."
"I used a little too much strength."
"That hurt, didn't it~?"
"My adorable little one."
Ruan Mei didn't care whether Skaracabaz could understand her.
She simply continued soothing it.
Yet as her hand gently stroked its body, Skaracabaz genuinely quieted down.
Don't ask.
Her hands were covered in pheromones.
Anyone would be dazed for a while.
"So your evolution does have limitations."
"You reallocate functions from areas you temporarily don't need, converting them into specialized evolution toward a particular threat?"
"Combined with your rapid healing and ability to reproduce through division..."
"That's an excellent strategy~"
The pheromones were quickly metabolized and lost their effect.
Over the following period, Ruan Mei conducted countless additional experiments.
She peeled away sections of carapace.
Extracted bodily fluids.
Cut apart flesh and tissue.
By the end, the biological material she had removed from Skaracabaz was enough to piece together three complete Swarm Kings.
She even controlled Skaracabaz and ordered it to gather death-ray energy within its jaws before randomly bombarding Shanjian Heaven.
The destructive power visibly increased with every attempt.
Of course, not all of Ruan Mei's experiments were so crude and violent.
She performed plenty of delicate ones as well.
Gradually—
Ruan Mei entered a state of complete absorption.
She lost herself entirely in her research.
One experiment followed another without pause.
Then—
From a plum-blossom mark Ruan Mei had imprinted into the empty air, a hand suddenly emerged.
Its mechanical joints were clearly visible.
It belonged to one of Herta's puppets.
Shanjian Heaven, where the Garden of Recollection was located, wasn't connected to the outside world's communication networks.
Memokeepers had their own methods of communication.
But naturally, something like that wasn't enough to stop a group of geniuses.
Lin Yi and Screwllum had only agreed to judge each other's situation through the scale of the commotion they caused because both of them had been racing against time and had no opportunity to communicate directly.
The Herta, Ruan Mei, and Stephen, on the other hand, weren't necessarily that busy.
The Herta was contacting Ruan Mei through one of her puppets to check on her progress.
If she was nearly finished, then it was time to leave.
The Herta had already noticed that the disturbances outside were beginning to subside.
After Lin Yi withdrew, Screwllum had also hurriedly salvaged whatever remaining miscellaneous objects he could find, intending to study them properly once they were outside.
As for the extracted memoria—
Anything nearby was packaged up and taken with him.
Anything too far away was simply detonated.
The destruction of the "toilets" caused the memoria they had extracted to violently surge backward.
Screwllum had effectively opened the floodgates all at once and unleashed one final massive wave.
Meanwhile, The Herta had continued patiently playing along with the seven memosprites for one simple reason.
She had discovered something valuable hidden inside the Floating Light Sea.
Unfortunately, taking it would create quite a commotion.
Now wasn't the right time to make her move.
It would be better to wait until the very moment they were ready to leave.